Global Health Research Seminar Series- Fall 2019.
Join the Global Health Department as we host weekly research seminars open to the SPH community. The speakers are a combination of our own GH Department faculty and staff as well as colleagues and friends of the GH Department. Come hear the work of these researchers who’s impact stretches across the world!
Any questions contact: sphgh@bu.edu
Mondays from 1:00-2:00pm
Room: CT-305
801 Massachusetts Ave.
August 5th, 2019
Leo Martinez, PhD, MPH
Postdoctoral Epidemiology Research Fellow. Jason R. Andrews Lab. Stanford University School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease and Geographic Medicine
Interventions to Prevent and Identify Tuberculosis in Diabetic Patients
August 7th, 2019
Ron Dagan, MD
Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines: The First Vaccines Against Normal Nasopharyngeal Microbiota Constituents
September 9th, 2019
Kasthuri Sivalogan, MPH
Project Manager at CHAMPS Program Office
Overview & Early Findings from the CHAMPS Network
Short Personal Bio:
Kasthuri Sivalogan is a project manager for the Science, Strategy and Site Implementation team at the CHAMPS Program Office. In this role, she provides project management and data analysis support for the scientific components of CHAMPS and manages site coordination activities. Kasthuri graduated from the combined BS/MPH program at Boston University in 2016 with a BS in Human Physiology and an MPH in Global Health.
Short Description of CHAMPS:
The Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network is a global surveillance system, coordinated through Emory’s Global Health Institute, that aims to provide timely and accurate tracking of infectious and preventable causes of death for children under five years of age through a network of surveillance sites. Through strong collaborations with seven sites in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, CHAMPS is working to collect robust data on the most preventable causes of mortality among children under five years of age, including neonates and stillbirths. This network represents a paradigm shift for public health and from its inception, CHAMPS has been pushing boundaries about what is ‘acceptable’ in global health – from our commitment to data sharing and open data access to our focus on data use by local stakeholders.
September 16th, 2019
Agis Tsouros, MD, PhD, FFPH (UK)
International Adviser on Health Policy and Strategy
Former Director, Policy and Governance for Health and Wellbeing at WHO Europe
Former Director of Healthy Cities Programme at WHO Europe
City Leadership for Health,Equity,and Sustainable Development- Addressing the Urban Determinants of Health
Presentation Outline
City leaders have the power and the means to make a significant difference in the health and well-being of their people. The presentation will provide an overview of the preconditions of effective leadership and governance to address the urban determinants of health. It will make a case for creating cities for all that pay attention to health in all policies, health inequalities, social inclusion, tolerance and resilience and community empowerment. Why is the time right to act locally and globally for better health in cities? Why creating Healthy Cities is a political choice? Why should cities seriously and integrally address the sustainable development goals agenda? What is city health diplomacy? And what could be the role of academic institutions in supporting action for urban health, change and innovation? These are questions that will be explored in the context of the needs and challenges of cities in different socio-economic and environmental conditions.
Short Bio
Dr Tsouros is an international expert with 30 years of experience in the fields of health policy, urban health and healthy cities, inter-sectoral governance and health in all policies, social determinants of health and equity and health promotion. He led the development of the WHO European Healthy Cities from the time it was launched in 1988 until 2015 and the development of the WHO European Policy and Strategy Health 2020 which was adopted in 2012. During his 27- years-long career in WHO he had the leading responsibility for a wide range of technical domains including public health systems, tobacco control, prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases, environmental health and country support. During the period 2004 to 2006 he was seconded to the Greek Government to lead the public preparedness for the Athens 2004 Olympics and assumed the position of Chairman of the National Board of Public Health and President of the Greek CDC. The work on the Athens Olympics was instrumental in mainstreaming the field of Mass Gathering and Public Health within WHO. He is the author, co/author or intellectual sponsor/ initiator of several influential and widely-translated publications on urban health and healthy cities, the solid-facts series for policy makers on topics such as the social determinants of health and equity, active living, home care, health literacy, palliative care and healthy ageing and publications on leadership and inter-sectoral governance for health and sustainable development. He is currently advising WHO as well as individual countries and cities world-wide on health policy and governance. He is also working on the concept of city diplomacy for health and wellbeing. He established GlobalHealthyCities to promote strengthening Healthy Cities and the implementation of the new sustainable development goals agenda at the local level. He has had several academic affiliations with academic institutions including honorary and visiting professorships at University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London.
September 23rd, 2019
Chris Gill, MD
Associate Professor of Global Health
Fatal Burden of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections among Zambian Infants
Christopher Gill has an MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and an MS from Tufts-Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Studies.Dr. Gill is an infectious disease specialist by training. From 2002-2008 he was a faculty member of the Department of Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health, engaged in a wide variety of clinical trials and investigations. His research interests have focused on child survival, and include diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, pneumococcal and meningococcal disease, adherence to HIV medications, and neonatal survival. He was the principal investigator of the Lufwanyama Neonatal Survival Project in Northern Zambia (LUNESP), a prospective, cluster randomized and controlled effectiveness study designed to determine whether training traditional birth attendants to manage several common perinatal conditions could reduce neonatal mortality in the setting of a resource poor country with limited access to healthcare. The results demonstrated that training traditional birth attendants in neonatal resuscitation skills significantly reduces neonatal mortality by approximately 50%. From 2008-end of 2010 he was the Director of the Meningitis ACWY conjugate vaccine clinical trials group at Novartis Vaccines. There he was responsible for the design, implementation and analysis of Phase IIb, III and IV clinical trials in support of the vaccine, and played a key role in licensing this new vaccine in over 60 countries around the world, including the US. In 2011, he rejoined the faculty at the BU Center for Global Health and Development and the BU School of Public Health, working as the Director of the BUSPH Pharmaceuticals Program from 2011-15, teaching, mentoring, and conducting research in the areas of HIV medication adherence in China, advocacy around child mortality due to diarrhea and pneumonia, pertussis and RSV disease surveillance in Zambia, and capacity building of Vietnamese community health workers using SMS text messaging. Dr. Gill is the 2015 recipient of the Norman Scotch Award for excellence in teaching at Boston University School of Public Health, and the 2016 recipient of Boston University’s Metcalf Cup and Prize. The Metcalf Cup and Prize is BU’s highest teaching honor, and is awarded to one of BU’s >3500 faculty across its 17 colleges and schools each year.
September 30th, 2019
Dr. Samuel Kizito, MBChB, MSc Clin Epi & Biostat, F-GHES
Global Health Fellow, Yale University
Addressing the Gaps in Childhood Tuberculosis Diagnosis at Primary Care Facilities in Kampala Uganda
Bio:
Samuel is a medical doctor and epidemiologist/biostatician who trained from Makerere University Uganda with interest is in conducting epidemiological and implementation research in tuberculosis especially in children in resource limited settings. In 2015 after acquiring his master’s degree in clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, he started working under the Uganda TB Implementation Research consortium, a prestigious research institution at Makerere University collaborating with numerous US based universities. In 2016, he undertook a Fogarty-funded Global Health Fellowship through Yale University. He has been a co-investigator on a number of research grants at Makerere University, has presented at numerous international conferences and has published over 25 publications in peer reviewed journals. He is a visiting facilitator at the NIH Global Health fellows program and member of faculty at the Clinical Epidemiology unit at Makerere University.
He has received several awards including a Fogarty Masters degree Scholarship, the Judy Wasserheit Young Global Health Leader Award by the Consortium of Universities for Global Health. In addition, he won a distinguished student’s award as the most outstanding undergraduate medical student from Makerere University College of Health Sciences. In addition, he was awarded a merit-based scholarship for under-graduate students’ exchange program to Yale University USA, 2011. He appeared on the vice-chancellor’s list at undergraduate and post-graduate level having attained first class degree at both levels. He won a national scholarship by the government of Uganda for outstanding academic performance at high school to pursue his University education.
*ADDITIONAL SEMINAR*
Thursday, October 3rd, 2019
Location: CT386
Dr. Corrina Moucheraud
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Policy & Management
Fielding School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles
Health Systems & Services at the Intersection of HIV & NCDs in Malawi
Corrina Moucheraud is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She is a global health policy and systems researcher, focused on the question: how can we deliver high-quality, efficient, equitable, sustainable health services in low-resource, system-constrained settings? This presentation will discuss opportunities and challenges around managing the “double burden of disease” in Malawi, using both primary and secondary data, and both quantitative and qualitative methods.
October 7th, 2019
Dr. Moritz Kraemer, DPhil
Senior Research Fellow, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
Conflict, Infectious Diseases, and Human Mobility
Short Bio:
Dr. Moritz Kraemer holds a DPhil in Spatial Epidemiology from Oxford University and now splits his time between Harvard Medical School and the Department of Zoology at Oxford to study the emergence, spread and impact of arboviruses across the world.
Short Abstract:
Armed conflicts today are more prevalent, geographically more dispersed, and are predicted to increase as climates change and resources become more sparse. The role of conflict has been suggested to directly impact the response to the current Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. I will present quantitative estimates about the relationship between conflict and EVD transmission and suggest a framework for analysing the impact of conflict on human societies. I will further present examples how to use spatio-temporally refined data to identify causal associations in large scale data.
October 14th, 2019
*NO SEMINAR SERIES- COLUMBUS DAY*
October 21st, 2019
Sydney Rosen, MPA
Research Professor, Department of Global Health
Alana Brennan, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health
Matt Fox, DSc, MPH
Professor, Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health
Did we finally get it right? Results of the Slate II trial of same-day treatment initiation for HIV
Short Bios:
Sydney Rosen, M.P.A., is a Research Professor in the Department of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health and a Co-Director of the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office (HE2RO) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research addresses the economic consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and in particular the outcomes, costs, cost-effectiveness, and benefits of HIV and TB care and treatment interventions and models of service delivery. She is the principal investigator of multiple USAID-, NIH-, and foundation-supported studies and evaluations in South Africa and has worked extensively in Zambia and Kenya. She is also the author of policy and review papers on the business response to AIDS, the rationing of antiretroviral therapy, and the retention of patients in HIV/AIDS care and treatment programs. Her current projects include AMBIT, EVIDENCE, MATI, and EQUIP, all described on the BUSPH website. Professor Rosen’s technical training is in policy analysis and applied economics. She holds a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Alana Brennan, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. She received both her MPH in Epidemiology and PhD in Epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health. Her areas of expertise are in HIV, tuberculosis, non-communicable chronic disease, and health systems research.
Matthew Fox, DSc, MPH, is a Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health at Boston University. Dr. Fox joined Boston University in 2001. His research interests include treatment outcomes in HIV-treatment programs, infectious disease epidemiology (with specific interests in HIV and pneumonia), and epidemiologic methods. Dr. Fox works on ways to improve retention in HIV-care programs in South Africa from the time of testing HIV-positive through long-term treatment. As part of this work, he is involved in analyses to assess the impact of changes in South Africa’s National Treatment Guidelines for HIV. Dr. Fox also does research on quantitative bias analysis and co-authored a book on these methods, Applying Quantitative Bias Analysis to Epidemiologic Data (http://www.springer.com/public+health/book/978-0-387-87960-4). He is also the host of a public health journal club podcast called Free Associations designed to help people stay current in the public health literature and think critically about the quality of research studies (www.pophealthex.org/FA). He currently teaches a third-level epidemiologic methods class, Advanced Epidemiology as well as two other doctoral level epidemiologic methods courses. Dr. Fox is a graduate of the Boston University School of Public Health with a master’s degree in epidemiology and biostatistics and a doctorate in epidemiology.
Presentation Description:
The Revised Simplified Algorithm for Treatment Eligibility (SLATE II) trial was the third in a series of studies designed to evaluate the procedures and outcomes for same-day initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV. We will present the primary outcomes of SLATE and discuss implications for HIV programs and policies.
October 28th, 2019
Salome Kuchukhidze, MPH
Research Fellow, Department of Global Health
Lawrence Long, MCom, PhD
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health
Differentiated models for antiretroviral treatment delivery in Sub Saharan Africa- A systematic review
Presentation Description:
In an effort to meet the patient needs, while continuing to scale up HIV care with limited resources, many high prevalence countries are implementing alternative service delivery approaches, or differentiated service delivery (DSD) models. As part of the AMBIT project we summarize the most recent information available about DSD models currently in use in sub-Saharan Africa. In the presentation below we identify gaps in the existing published literature and conference proceedings with respect to description of ART delivery models, uptake, coverage, effectiveness, and cost.
November 4th, 2019
Samuel Likindikoki, MD, MMed
PhD Candidate, Boston University School of Public Health
Lecturer, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences
Issues with Access to HIV Services for People Who Inject Drugs in Tanzania
Samuel Likindikoki is a Psychiatrist and a Lecturer at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) His research focuses on; Gender-Based Violence and Child Protection, Non-Communicable Diseases including mental health and bio-behavioral aspect of HIV prevention. Of recent, he is engaged in the research regarding health system strengthening for key and vulnerable populations especially for people who are addicted to heroin, refugees’ population as well as young girls and adolescents. In his PhD, Likindikoki is researching on the determinants of access to comprehensive HIV intervention for people who inject drugs in Tanzania.
November 11th, 2019
*NO SEMINAR SERIES- VETERANS DAY*
November 18th, 2019
Madeline Ray, MSW, MPH
Research Fellow, Department of Global Health
Undocumented African Immigration in Mexico & Public Health Social Work Process
Trained in anthropology, social work, and public health, Madeline Ray, MSW, MPH, is a Research Fellow at BUSPH interested in international and US projects at the juncture of culture, health, and justice.
She will present research in process and discuss the potential for collaboration between social work and public health research fields.
November 25th, 2019
*NO SEMINAR SERIES- FALL RECESS*
December 2nd
Chris Gill, MD
Associate Professor of Global Health
Why Some Kids Get Pneumonia: Immunological and Microbial Reasons Why Pneumonia Does Not Appear to be a Random Event
Speaker Bio:
Christopher Gill has an MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and an MS from Tufts-Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Studies.Dr. Gill is an infectious disease specialist by training. From 2002-2008 he was a faculty member of the Department of Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health, engaged in a wide variety of clinical trials and investigations. His research interests have focused on child survival, and include diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, pneumococcal and meningococcal disease, adherence to HIV medications, and neonatal survival. He was the principal investigator of the Lufwanyama Neonatal Survival Project in Northern Zambia (LUNESP), a prospective, cluster randomized and controlled effectiveness study designed to determine whether training traditional birth attendants to manage several common perinatal conditions could reduce neonatal mortality in the setting of a resource poor country with limited access to healthcare. The results demonstrated that training traditional birth attendants in neonatal resuscitation skills significantly reduces neonatal mortality by approximately 50%. From 2008-end of 2010 he was the Director of the Meningitis ACWY conjugate vaccine clinical trials group at Novartis Vaccines. There he was responsible for the design, implementation and analysis of Phase IIb, III and IV clinical trials in support of the vaccine, and played a key role in licensing this new vaccine in over 60 countries around the world, including the US. In 2011, he rejoined the faculty at the BU Center for Global Health and Development and the BU School of Public Health, working as the Director of the BUSPH Pharmaceuticals Program from 2011-15, teaching, mentoring, and conducting research in the areas of HIV medication adherence in China, advocacy around child mortality due to diarrhea and pneumonia, pertussis and RSV disease surveillance in Zambia, and capacity building of Vietnamese community health workers using SMS text messaging. Dr. Gill is the 2015 recipient of the Norman Scotch Award for excellence in teaching at Boston University School of Public Health, and the 2016 recipient of Boston University’s Metcalf Cup and Prize. The Metcalf Cup and Prize is BU’s highest teaching honor, and is awarded to one of BU’s >3500 faculty across its 17 colleges and schools each year.
December 9th
Julia Lanham
Assistant Director of Advising and Relationship Management
From good intentions to good practice:Using an equity audit to access the work of an SPH Career and Practicum Office
Speaker Bio:
Julia Lanham is the Assistant Director of Advising and Relationship Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health where she works with MPH and DrPH students, graduates and alumni to find meaningful employment and develop flexible career plans. Before coming to BU in 2014 Julia had a 15 year career in community health. Julia is a racial justice advocate actively challenging the systems of racism and white supremacy in her community.
Description of the talk:
The Career and Practicum Office (CPO) at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) went through the process of conducting a racial equity audit to assess all aspects of its work. The purpose of this audit was twofold: 1. Determine whether the CPO puts into practice the school’s value of promoting justice and equity in its work, and 2. Determine whether the CPO is preparing public health graduates for success in a public health workforce that seeks structural racial equity and justice. This presentation will discuss lessons learned and offer guidance to other academic institutions and partners interested in conducting an equity audit.
*ADDITIONAL SEMINAR*
Wednesday, December 11th, 2019
Location: CT386
Guilherme Werneck,MD, MPH, DSc
Professor, Department of Epidemiology, State University of Rio Janeiro
Leman Visiting Scholar, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University
A neglected tropical disease invades the city: Prospects for surveillance and control of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil
Personal Bio:
Guilherme graduated in Medicine and received a DSc degree in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). He has an appointment as a full professor at the Department of Epidemiology of the State University of Rio de Janeiro. He is a member of the “WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Parasitic Diseases (Leishmaniasis)” and a senior researcher of the Brazilian Research Council. From 2012-2014 he was a visiting scientist at the Department of Global Health and Population at HSPH. His research focuses on the epidemiology of infectious diseases. He has a particular interest in the use of spatial data analysis, geographic information systems, and remote sensing for identifying socioeconomic and environmental determinants of the occurrence and spread of visceral leishmaniasis and other neglected tropical diseases. He is now on sabbatical leave for 6 months as a Leman Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Centre for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
Short description of presentation:
Visceral leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease that affects around 50-100 thousand people worldwide each year. In Brazil, VL is caused by the protozoan parasite Leishmania infantum, transmitted by the bite of female sand flies and having the domestic dog as the main reservoir in the urban transmission cycle. Control of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis has been a deceiving effort for Brazilian public health officers and researchers. Since the 1980s, the disease has undergone a notable process of urbanization, and geographical dissemination and the epidemiological situation is far from showing any substantial progress. The Brazilian program for visceral leishmaniasis control recommends vector control with residual insecticides and the culling of infected dogs as the main strategies to reduce transmission. However, few well-designed epidemiological studies give support for their wide-scale use, most showing limited effectiveness and only in specific settings. In this talk, I will present some of my work over the last 20 years on evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions against visceral leishmaniasis in the urban context and on the use of spatial data analysis, geographic information systems, and remote sensing for identifying high-risk areas for targeting control interventions.
END OF FALL 2019 SEMINAR SERIES